What free trade does to our society

[Atreus21]

I'll have a look this evening.

I'm proud to say that my comment is currently the highest rated. I just noticed today.

 

[soulcougher73]

I'll give you one guess as to which nation (the only one on earth) currently subscribes to absolute self-sufficiency.

I dont know. Ill guess Russia. But how is that a bad thing exactly to be self-sufficient? Im assuming you are saying its a bad thing by the way you worded your responce. I could be wrong.

 

[Infohawk]

How?

Trading with democracies is safer. It's sort of pathetic western capitalists think their capital is safe in China or other third world countries. Those countries will ignore property rights as soon as it suits them. Also, trading with developed countries doesn't destroy our industries and destroy jobs. We traded for decades with Canada and Europe and the balance of trade was roughly equal.

 

[Doppel]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/detroit-sold-for-scrap,1931/

 

[bfdd]

Hard to compete with $0.31/hour wages.

you propagate it by buying goods produced by them. Stop supporting Foxconn and all the companies that do business with them then you can bitch. Or would that make life to hard for you? Maybe Americans make to much money and demand to much? Ever think of that? I don't support Foxconn, I believe the long hours and shitty work environment are not good practices and will hurt Foxconn in the long run, but they aren't all bad. Where does the personal responsibility of the workers come in? When are they responsible for selling themselves into slavery? A slave is someone who accepts a master, you can always fight.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Shrug. If democrats could just raise it to $20/hr they could magically cure poverty.

You have to distinguish between free trade with developed democracies and free trade with third world dictatorships. Trade with Canada or Germany doesn't hurt the US. Trade with countries with no labor standards, etc definitely hurts us.

How?

IMHO he misses the mark with his last point because he is focusing way to much on the political assumptions as to why some nations may have lower wages and/or standard of living rather then the actual result of having "Free Trade" with 3rd world nation.

However the final conclusion stands.

Of which that conclusion states that when you open up your labor markets to nations which have roughly similar standards of living/wages the actual effect of open/free trade between these corresponding labor markets in terms of wage and job movement trends toward a minimal impact while allowing a greater diversity of competition and opportunity wealth generation between the peoples of these competing 1st world nations.

However when this situation has a 1st world nation opening up its labor markets (via a "Free trade" agreement) to a 3rd world nation that has a significantly lower standard of living and average wages for their workforce (for whatever the reason) as compared to the 1st world nation then the observed trend of wages and job movement is seen to be skewed toward a negative effect for the workers in the 1st world nation vs the 3rd world nation's workforce. This being that the 3rd world nation's workforce has really nowhere else to go but up in terms of employment and wage increases as trade and commerce proceeds with this trading partner and the 1st world nation's workforce has a lot to lose in terms of job movement and wage loss as labor markets are exposed to each other.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

I dont know. Ill guess Russia. But how is that a bad thing exactly to be self-sufficient? Im assuming you are saying its a bad thing by the way you worded your responce. I could be wrong.

Check out David Ricardo's comparative advantage theory. He explains why everyone is better off with free trade. (if you believe his assumptions hold)

 

[mrSHEiK124]

you propagate it by buying goods produced by them. Stop supporting Foxconn and all the companies that do business with them then you can bitch. Or would that make life to hard for you? Maybe Americans make to much money and demand to much? Ever think of that? I don't support Foxconn, I believe the long hours and shitty work environment are not good practices and will hurt Foxconn in the long run, but they aren't all bad. Where does the personal responsibility of the workers come in? When are they responsible for selling themselves into slavery? A slave is someone who accepts a master, you can always fight.

Do you own a computer? I haven't worked on a computer that didn't have FOXCONN stamped on at least one part of it. I've never seen an I/O cluster on a motherboard that didn't have FOXCONN stamped on it.